In recent years artists, activists and laymen, have been starting to produce, publish and use realtime environmental sensor data. Artistic practices of sonification and data visualisation became popular ways of data interaction. Platforms like the physical computing environment Arduino, or the realtime data publishing network Cosm (prev. Pachube) have led to a wide distribution of amateur knowledge and skills. Variable terms have been assigned and are related to these practices like citizen science, open data movement, crowd sourcing, open hardware movement, smart city, smart environment or ubiquitous computing.

Scientists are typically collecting data to research particular questions about environmental change, for instance, while many artists’ experiments seem to focus more on the phenomenal or sensory aspects of data gathering, or are often focused on ‘visualizing’ or ‘sonifying’ already collected scientific data. The goal of the workshop is to work out best practice approaches to strengthen the data which are produced in a non scientific context practically and politically and so in return the resulting artworks and activist impact of the work carried out.

In recent years artists, activists and laymen, have been starting to produce, publish and use realtime environmental sensor data. Artistic practices of sonification and data visualisation became popular ways of data interaction. Platforms like the physical computing environment Arduino, or the realtime data publishing network Cosm (prev. Pachube) have led to a wide distribution of amateur knowledge and skills. Variable terms have been assigned and are related to...